


Repercussions

by royaltyisshe64



Category: Billary - Fandom, Political RPF - US 21st c.
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-21 09:49:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14913104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/royaltyisshe64/pseuds/royaltyisshe64
Summary: Twenty years later, it all starts coming back.





	Repercussions

April 20, 2018

He found her in the kitchen, perched with alarming precariousness on a small stepladder and using her still-encased wrist to steady herself as she rummaged through the cupboards.

Hillary intuited his presence, could practically see his wince and the horrified widening of his eyes. “This wouldn’t be necessary if you didn’t insist on hiding the cookies, Bill. If you kept them where people of – _average_ – height had access –“ She cast a cheeky glance over her shoulder. Slightly flirtatious, if he was in the mood to read it that way. Her smile faded rapidly. Bill was ashen, worrying at his lower lip. That muscle in his jaw was tensing and releasing in an agitated rhythm. This was clearly about more than the potential for her klutziness to strike again. She knew that Barbara’s death, however expected it had been, was a blow – another parental figure gone, another little jolt to a personal universe that had already seen more than its fair share of turmoil. They had talked and cried about it on Tuesday. Not that that meant it was done and dusted, the grieving process over, but the clear, almost queasy anxiety registering on his face did not mesh with such straightforward sadness.

Descending with both speed and caution, her arms were soon wrapped around his waist, gently guiding him to the sofa in the adjoining room. Hillary was most unsettled by the silence. It never took Bill Clinton this long to find words.

“Hillary –“ He wished he didn’t feel the compulsion to start this discussion. Wished he couldn’t anticipate and so vividly envision the clouds that would darken eyes bluer than the sea. But now she was fretting, his little worrier-in-chief, and he had no choice but to proceed. “Are you going to talk to her?”

Her. _Her._ Hillary rifled through her mental Rolodex, searching for a name that could be reasonably paired with his anxiety. No, not anxiety. More puzzling, she could detect no nervous fidgeting or worsening tremor – just the all-too-familiar hallmarks of guilt. That did not sit easily with her.

She raised a quizzical eyebrow. Elaboration was sorely needed.

“Melania,” Bill reluctantly supplied.

That scarcely clarified matters. As far as she could discern, there was nothing for her and the current First Lady to discuss, beyond some perfunctory pleasantries. They had, Hillary firmly reminded the knot in the pit of her stomach, nothing in common. One thing, she conceded. Both of them were married to – an internal shudder – Presidents of the United States. That was all.

“What about?” she asked, hoping to jockey Bill out of this strange malaise with humor. “Our mutual loathing of her husband? Which of us is more pissed off that he’s president? Whether she thinks he’ll actually score under par Saturday or if he’ll just say he did and brag about it when she gets back? I don’t think there’s much territory for us to cover, honey.”

Shifting his weight from one hip to the other, his eyes briefly flickered her way, clear blue dulled to grey. “You know.”

_‘What he did. What I did.’_

Out with it. “All the stories that are coming out,” he started, voice raspier than usual. Like that, she knew. Or, rather, she could no longer deny that she did.

_The women._

The porn star, the Playmate, the reality television personality, and god knows who else before the bimbo eruption subsided: this cavalcade and the ensuing feeding frenzy in the media reminded Bill of his women.

_The other women._

His demons that were now hers.

It reminded her, too. Of course it did. How could it not? But she had kept all that at bay, banished those undesirable thoughts to the barricaded corner of her mind where the memories and the awful hurt dwelt, safely sequestered. Until now, anyway.

“No.” One syllable could contain nearly forty-five years of devastation. Bill knew that from past experience, but familiarity never precluded the rough edges in her tone from catching at his heartstrings. “Bill, I’m not doing this. I can’t.”

“Baby…” As quickly as his hand found hers, she snatched it away.

“I am not giving you absolution. I understand why you did it. I’ve forgiven you and I trust you and I believe that you haven’t done it since then, but that’s all I can do. Being forced to relive it every time you get a little twinge of remorse – shit.” Hillary felt her cheeks flushing, skin covered in pinpricks, and that wave of tears and nausea threatening to overwhelm her. Control was one of her most prized assets; this topic, when unexpectedly broached, evaporated it. Heartbreak and anger emerged from hibernation. She was _not_ going to cry. She would not succumb to that particular indignity at the drop of a hat.

“You’re remembering, too,” he said ruefully.

“It doesn’t just go away.” Careful, cutting enunciation.

Weeks – months, even – passed when the spectre of infidelity was extricated almost completely from her consciousness. They could laugh and fight and make love without giving it a moment’s thought. Day-to-day reality had not included that fact since her earliest days in the Senate; her world did not revolve around her husband’s peccadilloes. And she was incalculably grateful for that fact. But gone? No. Forgotten? Not permanently. If life had taught Hillary Rodham Clinton anything, it was that no matter how hard she scrubbed at her soul, at her memories, there were some blemishes that could not be erased. Some things could not go back to how they were Before. Before he fucked those girls down in Arkansas. Before that first shattering betrayal. Before each brutal repetition. Before she learned that echoes were not inherently any less devastating than the original. Aftershocks regularly outstripped the initial earthquake’s destructive force.

She could feel silent apology pulsing from him, compounding, as always, the recurring dull ache in her chest and its twin at the pit of her stomach.

“Never thought I’d see the day when I was sorry for Melania.” Hillary broke the silence, not quite ready to accept his contrition. “Though she can’t possibly be surprised.”

That last statement choked unexpectedly into a sob. God, how many times had those very words been said of her? A mousy little nothing from up north, inexplicably clinging to the belief that her big glasses and frumpy clothes and agile mind could hold someone as handsome and charismatic and brilliant and broken as Bill Clinton. How could a girl like _that_ possibly be surprised that she would never be quite enough? How long would she hold on, how long would she fight, before she realized the futility of her struggle? How pathetic. How desperate. The paranoia had (mostly) left her decades ago – a small mercy, given how much less she had in her arsenal these days with which to defend her claim. 

These were the ugliest thoughts – the hardest to silence. _‘Not true. He loves me.’_ Her mantra, amplified by how tightly her husband was suddenly holding her, rose triumphantly over the sound of her crying into his sweater.

“See?” the muffled, shaky voice she could barely recognize as her own managed before Hillary hesitantly raised her head. “Told you I didn’t want to talk about it.” A wobbly smile.

Bill applied kisses to her cheeks, ignoring his own tears in favor of tending to hers. “I’m sorry.” She nodded, receptive this time. “Being on the outside – I can see more clearly what you had to go through, without my own selfishness obscuring the view.”

“You had so much on your shoulders,” Hillary countered defensively. “They were trying to destroy you and that was the only thing they had to use. It wasn’t fair. Doing your job is not selfish.”

A weak laugh escaped him. It scarcely mattered what he did or how his actions affected her; her protective instincts were difficult to quash. “You’re an angel, but that’s not what I meant and you know it. I spent years having my cake and eating it too. When I couldn’t lie to you or to myself anymore – when the wheels finally came off – then I was forced to deal with real consequences for the first time. It wasn’t just a matter of how much you were willing to take. And, Christ, you were willing to take a lot. I don’t think I’ll ever understand why you finally said yes to me. Or why you stayed.”

“I love you.”

_‘And when you love someone, you don’t just leave. You help them.’_

“I know.”

“Well?”

There was his explanation. All he was ever going to get, anyway. Bill saw the size and tenderness of her heart: the greatest strength she possessed, as well as, perversely, her most significant weakness. Primarily as applied to him, he thought with another self-reproaching twinge.

Hillary silenced the remonstrance with a kiss. The sensation of her lips against his eased his tension, relaxing him into her. As she pulled back to catch her breath, he caught her brow’s contemplative furrow and queried her wordlessly.

After taking a moment to give her ponderings structure, she said quietly, “Do you think it hurts less if you’re not in love? Maybe it doesn’t. Because then you don’t have a real reason for staying. You’re just trapped, whether it’s the kids or the money or whatever else.”

“I don’t know,” Bill murmured. He felt himself slipping back under the waves, icy shame filling up his lungs. “I’ve – you’ve never made me feel that way.” An objection seemed imminent, her eyes poised to roll dismissively. “And don’t you say you couldn’t have. You should know just as well as I do that’s not true.” She should, of course, but too often she clearly didn’t. Flirtation didn’t count. Nor did a moment or two of weakness, not when she snatched herself back from the precipice so swiftly, so conscientiously. Not when he had let her down with such frequency and devastating totality.

Lost in thought, she shook her head. The denial was expected, but no less disheartening. Regardless of the balm he’d applied to her oft-wounded ego over the years – how earnestly he meant it, how true every single word of his paeans to her beauty were – there remained a scintilla of doubt that never stopped gnawing at him. A seed he’d allowed to be planted, now grown into a tree whose fruit he abhorred and that he found impossible to eradicate, no matter how he tried.

“You know,” he said, drawing her close again, “Barbara told me once that I was the biggest goddamn fool she’d ever met – and that that was saying something, since she raised George W.”

Hillary guffawed as a matter of reflex, albeit somewhat mirthlessly. “Even for her, that’s a little harsh. Just for being a Democrat, too.”

“No. Because of what I put you through.” His wife went still in his arms, his large hand stroking her, almost absently. Bill could recall vividly the day when George had left him one-on-one with Barbara under the flimsy pretext of searching for a book he wanted to loan the younger man. “I went to visit them, not all that long after you were in the Senate and I was out of office, and once we were alone she gave me the dressing-down of my life. If she could have, she’d’ve tanned my hide sure. Every single word she said was absolutely right – and I knew it, and she knew I knew it, but she also knew I needed to hear it out loud from someone whose opinion I valued.” From someone who felt like a mother. Dorothy hadn’t had the heart to bawl him out, but Barbara had no such compunctions and she had held nothing back. His therapist’s role was to listen and advise, not to judge or offer the kind of tough love his behavior sometimes warranted. This was a task best left to one of Barbara Bush’s caliber, and she had been acutely aware of that fact. “She told me I was married to a gorgeous, sweet, good girl who was much smarter than me. As if I needed telling.” He tightened his embrace, an act that ostensibly served the dual purpose of comforting Hillary and suppressing his own tears while succeeding at neither. “And that – the mother of my children, both living and –“ That thought couldn’t be finished, especially not once he felt Hillary’s shoulders start to heave. How Barbara had known was beyond him; those words had felt like a punch to the solar plexus, leaving him dazed and devastated. “ – deserved better.”

“Don’t, Billy.”

“It’s true. I did right by you in some ways, but when I fucked up –“

Hillary desperately tried to pull herself together. This was ridiculous. Further evidence, as if it was needed, clearly demonstrating the futility of dredging all this up ad nauseam. All it did was hurt. And to what end? There was no catharsis to be found here. Barbara was now added to the legion that pitied her, a list possibly more sickening than the even longer roster of those who loathed her and saw no heart to be broken.

“Their – their marriage wasn’t so perfect either,” she choked out, defensive without really being able to discern what she was combating or why. “Nobody talks about that. Those rumors don’t mean anything; nobody gives a shit. It’s always you – you and your – “ Just like that, she was gone again, collapsing into herself and then into him, as she invariably - inevitably - did. Sometimes she could keep the temporal gap between the first cave-in and the second a dignified one: a month, maybe two. Often, as now, it was a matter of microseconds. For all the ways she’d changed since that excruciating summer four decades ago – she often found herself wondering if Hillary Rodham would recognize herself in Hillary Clinton – this was one thread of continuity, linking her twenty-seven-year-old self, hot tears equal parts rage and grief soaking one of Sara’s pillows, with this seventy-year-old incarnation.

It was the same thing. Always the same.

She invariably wound up back in his arms.

\--

Finally exhausted, her aching tear ducts dried up and steadiness gradually returned to her breathing. A labored inhale. Shaky exhale. Repeat. Keep going until coherent speech becomes practicable.

“God, I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s the matter with me,” Hillary murmured, shifting awkwardly until his hand laced through hers was their only point of contact. Loss of control here, in the privacy of their home, was far better than any of the alternatives, but that didn’t mean she hated it much less.

‘Me. I’m _what’s the matter with you,’_ Bill thought, her pain searing through him. 

“Don’t be sorry,” he said. Like that, it was clear that this conversation was over, to be resumed only when it could once again no longer be avoided.

Getting to her feet, Hillary rubbed at her eyes furiously. At least it was out of her system now, lessening the likelihood of a lapse at the funeral or in front of Chelsea. Once the dam had burst, its capacity to keep back the flood could be restored at remarkable speed. She’d be safe again – for a while, anyway.

“So –“ Ready now, her eyes at last locked onto his once more, deep blue meeting pale. “Are you going to help me get those damn cookies or do we risk the other wrist?”

**Author's Note:**

> I got the idea for a one-shot after Barbara Bush's funeral, but... then Bill started his book tour. So at the moment, this is probably going to be three or four chapters. All that rather depends on Bill and Hill at this point, though, lol.


End file.
